


Silence

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 18:58:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16898130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: I can't disable commenting. If I could, I would. Please pretend that I have.





	Silence

Loki comes back home with him after the war, and not by force.

Thor isn't expecting it.

He doesn't mention how pleased he is by it. But he is grateful. Relieved.

It's written on Thor's face, but Loki is the only one who can still read it.

They haven't spoken a word to each other.

There are no words for this. For what they've learned. For what they've done. For what this victory cost them.

Gods can die. They've always known that.

They can also bring each other back.

There's a reason no one ever does.

It's not that it's overly difficult to do, but that it's all but impossible to bear.

For when you watch the love of all your long life fall, the only peace you find is that you'll never have to do it again.

But that's a grace granted to mortals and happier gods than these.

In the last battle, Thor and Loki lost each other so many times they stopped counting.

They watched each other drop, broken and bleeding, and then called each other back, hale and hearty, only to be felled afresh.

But it worked. They became a squad, a platoon, a company, a battalion, a brigade, a division, a corps, and in the end an army.

Surely the ends justify the means, they tell themselves.

The thought doesn't quite manage to be a comfort when they wake alone in the dark and screaming.

Three straight months of nightmares, until it doesn't matter if their eyes are closed or open - they always see the same thing. Thor sees the life drain from his brother's bright eyes. Sees his head cave in. Sees his back break. Sees his body burn. And Loki watches hot blood rain from Thor's veins. Watches spears pierce his heart. Watches swords cleave his skull. Watches arrows enter his skin.

All their deepest fears were made real - no longer mere worry, but vivid memory. They don't have the luxury of telling themselves It was just a bad dream.

The sight of them is a fright: skin sallow, eyes sunken and shadowed, ashy purples painted into all their hollows. Haunted and hungry. Their thirst for sleep and peace torments them.

When Loki opens his eyes to a blank mind and bedsheets that aren't sopping with terror-sweat and tears he thinks he has finally died, and he thanks the Norns.

It's too good to be true, of course.

He soon hears birds warning of dawn and then the sounds of the city waking.

And something else.

A soft thudding.

He assumes it's a repair being made to a distant rooftop and drifts off to sleep once more.

It's light when he wakes again. And still no nightmares. He thinks he might push his luck and nap the rest of the day.

He hears the thudding, at the same volume and pace as before. Ceaseless.

No one hammers like that, he thinks, and rolls to the edge of his mattress to rise and investigate.

His feet never make it to the floor.

Stretched out on the rug by the base of the bed is his brother. He's on his back with his hands folded over his belly.

He could be on a bier, Loki thinks, watching Thor sleep. How many burning boats do we owe each other? How many millennia of mourning?

But Thor's heartbeat soothes him back down into the sheets and absolves him of all obligations.

He sleeps again.

He wakes at midday to the clicking of his door as it shuts, and hears his brother's footsteps echo away out in the hall.

Thor is glad his gamble paid off.

He looked at it as most likely being win-win. If Loki objected to Thor's sneaking into his room, then he'd have to speak to Thor to convey it – he misses Loki's voice - or at the very least touch him to toss him out the door. If he didn't object, Thor would get to listen to his brother's heartbeat and breathing, and ease his addled brain with the evidence of Loki's existence. Thor supposed there was a slight chance that Loki would leave, but he was desperate enough to take it.

Loki spends the day eating and soaking in his bath.

Thor spends the day riding and swimming in a spring.

Loki can smell as much when Thor sneaks into his room again that night.

He's glad Thor had the sense to leave such lovely scents on his skin. They wrap layers of warmth around his body and bring a welcome sense of peace to the room. Awaken memories of idylls that came not as long ago as life would have the brothers believe. Days spent floating leaves and flower garlands down streams while bare shoulders were burnished gold by the sun. Racing side by side into the sea, gasping and thrilling at the shock of the spray, letting the waves carry them into shore again and again. Riding retired war horses through the timothy and dismounting to lie down in it while the beasts grazed, listening to their munching and looking up through the long blades of grass to see birds and butterflies drifting across the sky. And never saying a word.

The next day Loki wakes to the sound of Thor leaving after another night spent in the sweet embrace of dreamless sleep.

Loki walks the realm to spy on Asgard's flora and fauna.

Thor spars with Sif.

In the evening they dine in their rooms and read. And when Loki's lights are out and he's on the edge of sleep, the door opens briefly to admit a familiar silhouette, and Thor stretches out on the rug.

It goes on like this for over a month before Loki's self-control crumbles.

Thor makes his not-quite-silent entrance and settles on the floor and Loki starts laughing.

“Why do you not sleep in the bed?” Loki chuckles. “It's big enough for six.”

“It's not mine,” Thor answers.

“Neither is the rest of the room, so why draw the line there?”

Thor sighs and they're both quiet for a moment.

“Six?” Thor asks. “Not five or seven?”

“Six,” Loki confirms. “Comfortably.”

Loki feels the bed dip slightly beside him. When he turns his head he can make out his brother's shape: on his back, hands folded over his belly, as ever, like a sculpture of a dead king.

No, Loki thinks, Neither like, nor a sculpture, but indeed a dead king. I've seen him.

“If I fall asleep before you're here, I still have the dreams,” Loki says.

“So do I,” Thor murmurs. “I try every night in my room – to test it – but it's always the same. As soon as I've slipped away... I see you...”

“I know.”

When they wake, they find they've slept so long the sun is already sinking.

The day is warm. A straggler from summer, passing through fall and blushing hot with its embarrassment.

They eat a swift supper and set out to swim in a stream.

They're silent again, but it's not strained. Just soft. And Loki needs it.

Thor hasn't seen him naked since before his banishment. Loki has been careful to keep a sheet between them even though Thor knows that the Jotnar share one form. Even gods can only stomach so much change in such a short time.

The shape Thor stood beside for all those centuries was a lie.

Loki almost found it funny when he learned the truth.

The god of lies incarnate.

But the lie was not his.

And now he doesn't know where to stand.

He doesn't want the body Odin built for him. But he doesn't want the blue skin of the one who left him on the ice to die, either. There are so few places he feels safe putting his allegiance. He almost wishes he could take Frigga's shape. Or Thor's. His sole allies. It's only because they always loved him that he holds onto his old image at all.

So he stretches Aesir flesh like Frigga's over a Jotun form like Farbauti's and supposes it's the best he can do.

Loki tries to breathe while he strips, but he's bracing himself.

Needlessly, as it turns out.

Thor doesn't blink or stare or treat him any differently. Still doesn't speak. They float and splash in the sweet fresh water, dipping their lips to drink in the pulse of their world. They dive down to look for strange stones before the light gets too dim. They brush against each other as the current jostles their bodies, and Thor doesn't shy from it, but welcomes it. Pinches and prods Loki just as he did centuries ago.

When the sun falls behind the trees, the brothers climb up the bank and stretch out in the grass. Thor brings a storm down on their heads and they lie naked on their backs to feel the rain. The air smells of herbs and minerals. Of clover, stone, and peat. And of their skin. The veins of lightning are a wonder against the darkness of the thunderheads. They look like the lifelines of the sky, and its blond heart is beating beside Loki on the lawn.

They sleep where they are and wake to hair damp with dew. It rains down onto their shoulders as they rise and tickles them as it drips down their skin.

Three weeks later Thor starts awake in the middle of the night, disoriented, heart racing. He can smell iron. But he can't recall his dream. He takes that to mean he's still in it.

“Loki,” Thor chokes, shaking him. “Loki, wake up. Brother, please, you're bleeding.”

“Sthmatter?” Loki slurs, calling light to the room and squinting as he sits up to stare at Thor.

“You're bleeding,” Thor says again, and he's sobbing.

It takes Loki a second. Then he groans, flops back down into the pillows, and recalls the light he cast.

Thor sits in the dark and pants for a moment.

“Oh, shit, Loki, I'm sorry,” Thor moans. “I'm an idiot. Sorry. Your monthlies.”

“Quarterlies, actually,” Loki sighs, and he thinks the shaking of the bed is his brother nodding, but then it goes on too long. “Thor?” Loki whispers. “Did it give you a dream?”

“No. It... I thought this was the dream. That the nightmares had caught up with me here.”

“Fret not,” Loki soothes. “It's only your brother's weird womb, weeping that it's not with child.”

Thor barks a laugh and Loki starts chuckling. They titter until the panic has fled from their pulses and Thor's tears and trembling have ceased.

Thor rolls onto his side and grips Loki's upper arm, resting his fingers on the inside of the bicep and feeling Loki's heartbeat drumming against the tips.

They sleep for two days like this.

Loki likes sleeping through his menses. They make him irritable and raw. He can't trust himself. Sleep is safer.

Loki worries about the day when they can fall asleep alone and there are no more nightmares and he loses this. Then he chides himself for being ungrateful and greedy: he could have lost more, a thousand times over.

He could have lost everything when he sent the destroyer to kill Thor.

When he screamed the last of his secrets at him mere moments later.

When he dropped into the dying Bifrost soon after.

When he fell in battle, back and forth with his brother for days on end.

But death's a thing Loki can't seem to master, and Thor has the same trouble.

And now Thor knows everything, and he's still here.

How can he weep for me? Loki wonders. How has that well not run dry? But, then, Mother was the same way, and half of her lives on in him.

Loki wouldn't have dreamt he could love his brother more, but this realization drives that stake deeper.

When they rise in the morning they eat a rich breakfast and go back to bed.

When they wake a week later, Thor tosses his head and Loki follows. He goes to his closet and hands Loki a leather bag before passing him bedrolls, furs, ropes, knives, longbows, arrows, pots, and the heavily patched tent they've had since they were boys. Loki casts spells to make the objects smaller and sets them in the bag. They stop in the kitchens for bread, butter, cheese, and apples. Stop at the throne to see if Sif needs anything.

She has been standing in for Thor since they came back from the last battle. She was there. She saw what he did. What Loki did. They were the front line. She went back and forth between them, shielding whichever one of them was still breathing so that he could call his brother back and they could fight their foes to the death all over again.

She thought the hardest part would be watching Thor fall. But it wasn't. Watching them watch each other fall was far worse.

When they made it home and Thor asked her to hold his place, she knew he needed it. She had never seen him look so shaken.

She tells him to eat more.

Thor says they're going hunting, and she's glad. He still looks tired and hungry. Loki too.

Loki wards them from sight and they walk out into a walled garden. He climbs onto Thor's back and they giggle, because it's an absurd thing for two grown gods to do, but they don't let that stop them. Thor raises the hammer and the air rushes over them.

They land beside a river at the edge of a wood. At dusk the deer will come to drink. Loki counted too many bucks when he took his tour of the realm. They'll remedy that. In the meantime they set their tent and swim. Loki puts an impressive dent in the butter; Thor will have a lot of dry bread to eat.

As dusk draws near Loki wards their camp. They take up their bows and watch the wood.

When he was younger, Thor thought it unfair that Loki liked to ward himself when he hunted. It took him centuries to see his brother's design. Loki doesn't like to frighten his quarry. He even distracts the other members of a herd if they're nearby when his prey falls. Thor mistook mercy for cowardice. And then realized he had mistaken cruelty for sportsmanship. Now he hunts like his brother.

They take down three deer each. Loki cleans one while Thor flies the others to homes that lost their best hunters in battle. When he returns, Loki has a fire going and is roasting their supper. The meat is good. Loki has already tanned the hide with seidr and set it out for them to sit on. Afterward, Loki binds what won't fit in their bellies in blocks of ice and they watch the embers of their dying fire float up and dissolve in the stars. Soon the crackle of the burning wood is eclipsed by the gurgle of the river.

When Loki catches himself making bargains with his eyelids – if left can rest while right keeps watch then in two minutes you may switch – he sighs and sits up. Thor does the same. They duck into their tent and kick their boots to the corner. Shuck off their clothes and lay them by their feet.

Loki settles into the furs with a happy sound and Thor is pleased with himself for having brought so many pelts. The ground will be well padded. And the nights are getting cold. The warmth will be welcome.

It's early autumn. For all the loveliness of spring and summer, Thor has always preferred the fall. There's something effortlessly fearless about it. The way the realm lets itself die. The richness of the scents. Spicy. Earthy. Sharp. It all reminds him of his brother.

Thor tries to recall whether he spoke to Loki today.

No, he remembers, I only spoke to Sif.

He wonders what he might say. He can't think of anything Loki doesn't already know.

Loki is curled up on his side. Thor curls up in front of him and steals his right wrist, pressing his fingertips into the soft flesh and tendons on the underside to find Loki's pulse. He counts the beats, but only makes it to thirty before following his brother into dreamless sleep.

In the morning they shock themselves awake with a swim and then lie on the shore to let the sun warm their skin while the fish wiggle by.

They walk through the wood and pick pears from trees the birds have planted.

They watch each other's waists as they raise their arms to reach the fruit. Their tunics lift and leave their bellies and the bases of their backs exposed. They both find it funny that they get such pleasure from this stolen glimpse of skin after swimming together wearing nothing but water mere moments before.

They stumble upon the last of the season's raspberries and make short work of them. Thor finds wild onions. When they return to their camp he cooks them in butter with some of the leftover deer and the brothers sup long before sunset. All their game that night goes off into the sky with Thor, to be left on unsuspecting doorsteps. They don't bother to keep the fire going, preferring to watch the stars come out instead.

Thor eats one of the pears they picked, wanting a fresh taste on his tongue after onions and venison.

Loki casts tiny lights across the ceiling of their tent - a brighter copy of Asgard's skies. They toss their clothes into the corner and stretch out on their bed  - Thor on his back with his arms behind his head, staring up at Loki's stars of seidr, Loki on his belly with his hands under his chin.

Loki isn't hungry, but the scent of the fruit on Thor's skin makes his mouth water. Something sweet would be welcome.

He leans over and takes Thor's lower lip between his own, pulling the taste of the pear from his face. Thor hums and leans up into it, as if he was expecting it, so Loki keeps doing it - sucking the sugar from Thor's lips while Thor playfully nips at his mouth, slowing his motions and stretching his flesh.

Thor rolls toward him and Loki tips up onto his side to face him, scooting closer without breaking their kiss.

They listen to the tiny wet sounds their lips make and the gentle hiss of their breath as it breezes through their noses. Loki's right arm is trapped between their breasts while his left is low around Thor's waist. Thor's left arm is under Loki's neck and his right is wrapped around his shoulder. Their muscles are slack. The weight of Thor's arm holds their bodies in place. Loki throws his left leg over Thor's thigh to keep their hips pressed tight.

And they kiss, peppering cheeks, and nuzzling noses long into the night. Their tongues swirl and arch against each other. They tip their heads back to offer up their throats and it changes something. Opens something in them. Wakes it. An urgency. Loki's hand slips from the small of Thor's back, over his hip, and down to the base of his belly. He lifts the thigh he has thrown over Thor's own, fists his brother's thick cock, and slides the head across the slick folds of his cunt until it slips in. Thor curls his pelvis forward to push himself further inside and they keep kissing.

Dawn comes and they haven't moved. They're still hard. They're not sure how. Their hips are holding still. A particularly clever kiss will pull a twitch from their pricks, or make Loki's cunny clench, but beyond that they barely even breathe. Their heartbeats have slowed almost to the tempo of sleep.

The sunrise shifts things. Now their eyes can clearly see: swollen lips, throats sucked purple, tousled hair, bright eyes, and bare skin.

They move at last, but slowly. Loki's clever fingers tease and trace Thor's skin while Thor swings his hips to the beat of their breaths.

Loki starts moaning.

And Thor gets to bask in the beauty of his brother's voice, undiluted by language or logic. Just the sound. Pleasure. A song.

All of Loki's long body holds onto Thor's more tightly, gripping him with ropes and walls of muscle.

Thor sees his brother's eyes close and his brows draw up in the center as his sharp jaw drops. And then Thor feels Loki's semen pulse out onto his stomach, slick and hot. Thor answers with his own, pouring seed into Loki's quim as the flesh around him quivers.

They lie panting, bodies still bound.

When they've caught their breaths they go again.

The day is more than half gone by the time they're willing to part. Thor watches the stream of thick fluid that dribbles down his brother's thighs as Loki leaves the tent.

Thor cleans the seed from the pelt they slept on and sets it in the sun to dry.

They eat and swim.

Thor is still hard, and Loki's not far from it.

They set their bed to rights and Thor lays Loki down.

He settles himself between Loki's legs. He doesn't want to miss this while they're kissing. He wants to watch as Loki's flesh grows flush with blood. See the way wetness seeps from him.

He mouths the creamy skin of the inner thighs while his gaze lingers on the slick skin of Loki's cunt.

It makes Thor think of the inside of a conch; smoother than petals and tinted with delicate corals and pinks. His eyes follow the first drop of fluid as it trickles out of Loki's quim, down across the puckered wreathe of his anus and onto the pelt below. He leans in and takes the left lip between both of his own, tugging and kissing it gently with his head tipped to the side. He kisses all of Loki's cunny like this. Like he kissed his brother's mouth last night. He lingers until the scent, taste, shape, and texture are branded onto his memory.

Loki tastes largely like buttered bread, but there's a hint of vegetable soup with barley. Thor nearly laughs when his mind puts a name to the flavor. Loki likely wouldn't have noticed if he had: he's been writhing around Thor's tongue for over an hour, making happy moans and sighs. More music.

Thor sucks Loki's cock while he fucks him with long fingers and when Loki spills on his tongue Thor tastes more bread.

He kisses his way up Loki's body and and lays his own down over it, teasing the swollen lips of Loki's cunny with the tip of his prick and then driving inside with a smooth thrust. They both moan and Thor all but collapses; only his hips keep their composure, bobbing in a gentle rhythm until both of the gods are gasping into each other's ears.

Thor starts moving as soon as Loki's quim stops twitching and Loki hears rain on their linen roof.

But it's more than that. He feels the rain as it forms and falls. Feels it land on every inch of the realm, droplets shattering and splashing over a thousand different surfaces. Feels the electricity grow thick in the air and split the sky. Hears the thunder's voice in his bones before the boom reaches his ears.

And now Loki knows what it's like to storm.

The sound he makes when he spills is one his brother will never forget.

They sleep for days in a tangle of limbs while soft rain falls.

They only leave their tent to hunt and swim.

And they know they'll never dream again.

And they know they'll never miss it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I can't disable commenting. If I could, I would. Please pretend that I have.


End file.
